Okay. Livi is the oldest kid in her K class (because of the cut off date) and she's reading at a 3rd/4th grade level. Her class does things she did at the beginning of pre-K. The class is divided into groups by ability and she's in the highest group and they do slightly harder work than the other kids. Her class work and homework is stupidly easy. Write numbers 0-20, dot to dots, write a small sentence or two. I've spoken with her teacher (who I mostly love) about it several times and finally when almost nothing changed (they now sometimes add in a few harder homework sheets) I spoke to the principal. I did that because I have an acquaintance who had her kid IQ tested and because her IQ was above average, the school district guarantees some extra learning. Anyway. That was before the Christmas break and still no change.

Livi used to LOVE homework but now she is so disheartened by how easy it is that she has lost all her motivation. It breaks my heart and I'm pissed because this is a kid who is born to love school, and she's losing interest.

Advice?

_________________"T-shirts are not allowed in heaven, Karyn. They don't do casual Fridays." - Amandabear

I prepared Shae that Kindergarten was going to mostly about learning routine and making new friends, lots of review and we would keep learning new things at home. His teacher taught him some things separately and let him go into older classes for reading and math, this happened until 2nd grade when they start the advanced classes (Quest) in our county. They won't IQ test here until 2nd grade, and at that point he had his Quest teacher in his classroom daily and then spent one full day a week with her. We were really lucky because his school was an inclusion school which means one class in each grade level was the highest & the lowest level kids together, so they had lots of specific things tailored to their learning needs. He also had amazing teachers until 3rd grade (when that teacher told me that 5 kids in her class had "way way way higher IQ's" than she had, but at that point he was supported by his Quest teacher so it worked out. It really helps to have teachers who are used to higher level kids because it really does require looking at things differently to keep them engaged. It sounds like you are doing a lot of the right things. Something we did at home was think of ongoing projects to work on a little at a time, kind of as a reward for not rushing through the easy school work and also, you know, to keep him from going stagnant. Dinosaurs and space were a few that we did. Read anything we could find, did art projects, make collages, etc etc

I'm worried about this with Silas too. It's strange because for so long we were worried about him not being able to reach the level of kids his age, but now he is already ahead of most typical Kindergartners (which he won't be till 2014 school year because of age cut off). It's all very tricky. I hope you can find something that helps Livi interested and having fun!

Tough situation! I think Kelly's advice of having some of your own "projects" you work on at home for a reward after the boring/easy homework is done is a great idea. I would recommend it be topical like she suggested rather then working on the core reading, writing, math because not only will that be more fun but it will also help to not perpetuate the problem of constantly being ahead. I had a similar problem in school in that my mom taught me to read before I went to kindergarten - then when I was super bored with all the other kids still learning thier ABC's my kindergarten teacher gave me more advanced reading and math to do. So then in !st grade everything was BORING because i had done in kindergarten. The problem persisted until my mom started homeschooling me in 5th grade. (my issue was NOT an IQ thing so I wasn't eligble for special classes - I was just perpetually ahead!)

The thing with kindergarten is that kids start at such a varying degree of skill that teachers have to cover all the basics fully to bring everyone minimally up to speed. Some kids start not knowing a single letter or number and then some are like Livi, you know? (Shae's teachers explained this to me).

How is Livi doing socially? Making friends? Having fun, besides the work? I always check for clues in these areas first, because at least with Shae, that can be the leading reason they aren't excited about school anymore.

Ps. I'll post more about teaching stuff at home when the flu eases off and I think think straight.

I'm so glad this thread popped up! I'm worried about this with my oldest - he goes to kindergarten this year. We do lots of learning at home already, so he can read a bit, and he knows his numbers and can add and subtract easy problems. (For fun - he initiated these things on his own!) I think he will really like the social aspect of school, but I wonder if he'll get bored quickly. It's got to be unbelievably tricky to run a kindergarten class, but I still wish it could accommodate kids who are ahead. Hopefully our school is good about it - we've got an orientation in spring.

(Kelly, hope you feel better soon!)

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

I am in the same situation and it is beyond frustrating. Kid's reading comprehension is at mid-second grade level and fluency and accuracy is a bit higher. Her teacher is great and tries really hard, but as I told her, there comes a point where it is no longer fair nor practical for her to come up with ways for MiniMe to stay engaged. To make things worse, she's begun to act out and be silly because she's so bored.

I've tried to push for testing, but the school shares its AIG teacher with three other schools and they use EOGs as tests for giftedness. They told me that they don't really do testing for younger kids. First they tried to tell me that they really couldn't test kids at 5 or 6, but as I'm a psych grad student so I know better.

I had another meeting set up last Friday, but there was like a half inch of snow so AAHHHHH school got canceled and now we have strep, so who knows what will happen. I was going to push for her to spend some time in first grade, and possibly just move on up. As of right now, I have no clue what's going to happen, but it has to be something. She went from loving school to wanting to stay home with me because she's not learning anything, just doing stuff she already knows (her words).

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 6025Location: United States of New England

they dont have any sort of seperate group for the more advanced kids?

i was one of the oldest in my class too because of cut off dates and i was always really smart and i remember in kindergarten they would take a small group of us aside however often and we would do "harder stuff"

and that was a million years ago!!

maybe it's just because it's kindergarten and like other people said all the kids come in at different levels. maybe 1st grade will be better????

Ugh. I don't know what to tell you, but I sympathize. TRS taught himself to read when he was around 4.5. In kindergarten, they had no idea what to do with him and he was miserable. (When we went to speak with his teacher and to show him the writing he'd been doing on his own, she was just so unhelpful. Instead of saying, "Oh. We need to rethink what we're doing for him," she criticized his subject matter! ("He should be writing about his real life, not fantasy." Lady! Most of your class can't read, and he's bored to tears!) Seattle Public Schools has a program called the Accelerated Progress Program. Kids had to test to get in. (TRS's kindergarten teacher discouraged us from applying for it.) The program's not perfect, but I can't imagine what we'd do without it. Kids in APP have separate teachers and classrooms and work (around) two grades ahead. We've found that so-called gifted kids don't always have it so easy. It's not enough to say, "Oh, they'll be fine."

FC was there at that age..... the only real guidance i can offer you is that plopping her in a new country and new culture and new language, while a challenge indeed, is probably not the optimal solution. ha!

she was so advanced before we moved, and then lost her interest in studying, no doubt due to the stress of moving/culture/etc. she's just starting to get it back now, and we load on the extra stuff (two extra languages, extra math lessons, cooking classes, she is now blogging....). it's a lot of extra work [for me] but she's got so much more depth to her than i see in her cousins and her friends, she's back to being curious, quick and interested in things... She is having fun now instead of just killing time, which was where she was not so long ago when she was bored and frustrated.

i don't know if you can access it in america, but in australia we have an online learning to read program you can subscribe to called "reading eggs" it goes from learning the alphabet right through to later primary school stuff and it's all go-at-your-own-pace. if livi wants to speed through she can. my son is on his second 2 week free trial and he has gone from knowing the letter "e" (because it starts his name) to knowing most of the alphabet and reading loads of simple words, he's been on it probably 15 times in total, the progress has been amazing. (he's 4, by the way) i'll put up a link, i don't know if it'll work for you guys... www.readingeggs.com.au

I had this problem, too. I went to private school for the first four years of elementary school and was taken out and given accelerated work. I was reading, writing in script (both in two languages), and dividing in kindergarten. When I got to public school (and a very good program for gifted kids actually) I was bored, bored, and more bored (except when challenged in non-academic ways - we had an intense responsibility and civics curriculum that was great for me). I don't think it matters if you're high IQ or not, it's a problem to have a lot of accelerated learning and then stop. Accelerated start programs seem to not be great for most kids - they wind up behind their peers rather than ahead in the end because they aren't pushed throughout their schooling, they're eventually lumped in with everyone else and lose their drive.

This is part of the reason I don't think I'm going to make any effort to get Malka reading early - if she picks something up, that's great, but I'm not going to do academic work with her until she has to do it. There is basically zero benefit to being ahead from all I can tell, even up through the college level - I went to a competitive school and majored in a physical science (so, uber-nerdville) and it didn't matter that I had taken 11 AP courses in high school because I was in school with people whose schools didn't offer that at all and taking all the intro classes with them (because you couldn't get out of anything but math with AP credit, so at least I got to skip a year on that) so I had to re-do and wait for them to catch up anyway. In the end my peers knew the material as well as I did and succeeded in their fields at high levels.

Have you considered having her skip a grade since she's at the upper end of her age range anyway?

And if you do extra work with her out of school, I'd do things that don't dovetail with the curriculum so she is pushed even further ahead. Teach her a different language or something like that.

There is basically zero benefit to being ahead from all I can tell, even up through the college level ... it didn't matter that I had taken 11 AP courses in high schoo.... In the end my peers knew the material as well as I did and succeeded in their fields at high levels.

this was my experience as well- i AP'd out of everything, and other than getting out of all my requirements, it didn't do much for me. had i known that i would probably have taken half a dozen fewer AP courses, and maybe enjoyed life a little more!

And things shift all the time. I was at the bottom of my class for 1st and 2nd grades and terrible in maths through 4th grade and then did every AP class our school offered and college classes while still in high school. I think it just depends on keeping kids interested through learning, which is what appifanie is talking about doing.

I don't plan to teach Leela stuff so that she can be ahead, but I would like to teach her to enjoy learning and play some of those awesome games with her.

When I was in first grade, my Dad was a biology professor and he taught me how to identify animals and their skeletons, and I still remember being so excited and proud that I could learn and do analysis (big bonus that my Dad was super-proud of me). I'd like Leela to have that kind of experience as well.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

I agree that being ahead doesn't really benefit kids. In my experience, I think it actually made me lazy because I was so used to school being so easy that I never had to do any studying. I honestly haven't researched it very much yet, but I like the Waldorf philosophy of not even teaching reading until an older age.

(Sorry appifanie, totally unhelpful, those are just my thoughts on the conversation.)

unless the teacher is very very new, she should be familiar with this, and have a way to deal with it. in kindergarten, kids have vastly different skill levels and experiences. we have kids who can barely write their names, and kids reading chapter books. kindergarten is about trying to suss out those various strengths and weaknesses, and get all the kids to a level where they can approach the more academic work of grade 1.

anyway, it sounds like maybe this teacher isn't able to really deal with the issue effectively. first step would be to not have livi do her homework if it's too easy or repetitive. let the teacher know what you're doing, tell her you'll be working on some other concepts, but don't stress trying to get livi to do something boring and pointless. i disagree with kindergarten homework philosophically anyway, but especially if it's busywork. if the teacher is amenable, ask for some ideas of concepts to approach, but if not, don't stress, just read and talk about subjects livi finds interesting... she does NOT need to get into the habit of homework this young.

very realistically though, livi is bright and socially adept and will probably never struggle academically, but she's probably not gifted. if she is, it's way too early to tell now, and high reading level at this age is indicative of very little but that she's mastered the mechanics of reading.

is she having fun in class? if she is engaged and enjoying and being challenged in at least one or two areas (including social or interpersonal skills) then i would just drop the boring, repetitive worksheets, and wait to see how it goes next year. i like kelly's approach of talking about how kindergarten is about lots of other things besides numbers and letters.

unless the teacher is very very new, she should be familiar with this, and have a way to deal with it.

i disagree with kindergarten homework philosophically anyway, but especially if it's busywork.

This times a million.

You could also try to explain to her how important things like play, cleaning up, managing materials, etc. are in K, because she probably doesn't realize all of that is part of what she is learning. At my school the kindergarten is pretty rigorous and they don't allow much playtime which I think is criminal.

And in defense of easy homework, I'll say this. Teachers are under pressure to give lots of homework these days. I personally don't think kindergarten students should be doing any homework except reading with a parent, but most parents and schools demand homework. So I know a lot of teachers assign quick and easy homework that is meant to be review for everyone. This is true in my class. The homework does not reflect the daily challenges in class. Don't know if that's true for your teacher or not, obviously.

Also, I'm not saying you are doing this, but many parents want to race to get to the next thing when a child would benefit from lingering with concepts to understand them more deeply. You might be able to read that book, but before you start reading books at a higher level, can you discuss how the main character has grown or learned a lesson? (If i had a nickel for every time a parent has told me their kid can read harry potter at home when i know well and good they can't read frog and toad at school, I'd be able to retire.) Of course, exploring concepts more deeply requires facilitation by the teacher.

I agree that being ahead doesn't really benefit kids. In my experience, I think it actually made me lazy because I was so used to school being so easy that I never had to do any studying. I honestly haven't researched it very much yet, but I like the Waldorf philosophy of not even teaching reading until an older age.

(Sorry appifanie, totally unhelpful, those are just my thoughts on the conversation.)

I fell into the same category.

I was reading when I went to kindergarten, because my mom read to me every night and one night I decided to read the book to her. Sort of self-taught I guess in a way. My kindergarten teacher loved it though, and she let me bring in one of my books and read to the class a few times.

I didn't skip any grades, though I remember asking about it at least once and really wanting to. I was also on the top end of the age range because my birthday is in mid-October and the cutoff was 9/30. I started Quest in 3rd grade, which was the earliest age they'd put you in there where I lived (Ohio). I loved that and went to Outreach classes when we moved to TN....same sort of thing but the group was much larger. We did a lot of brain teaser stuff and worked on more advanced projects there.

School was always pretty easy for me most of the time, so when it came time to actually study certain things in late high school and then college, it wasn't really something I was used to doing and was a big adjustment.

But, I survived, I learned to study, and I like to think I'm a normal, well-adjusted human being. ;)

So, I would ask the school about the gifted program and stick it out til then. Work with her at home a little but do other things -- brain teaser type things are great because they develop advanced skills without working on becoming even farther ahead in reading, math, spelling, etc. (which will probably happen anyway).

ETA: My second grade teacher was the only elementary school teacher I had who didn't seem to how to deal with an advanced student effectively, and she was a VERY experienced teacher. She was a good one too, just not good for me. She would get kind of angry when I would do things that were ahead of what she was teaching, because she claimed it would be too hard for me to "unlearn" the way I was already doing it to learn her way. One instance in particular being that my mom had taught me how to write my name in cursive because I'd asked. I wrote my name on the back of my work in cursive one day and my teacher wanted to talk to me before recess and admonished me for writing my name that way and told me to never do it again. I hope Livi doesn't get any teachers like that.